Legends of Switzerland

by H. A. Guerber

The new religion was so very distasteful to Wotan, that he hated both sight and sound of it, and hoping to avoid coming in contact with it, retreated far up into the mountains and took up his abode on the summit of the Diablerets. There, he vented his rage by sending dense fogs and violent storms down into the valleys, and by producing great snow-storms so that the melting drifts should cause all the rivers to overflow.

Brooding over his wrongs one day, Wotan determined to make a last and mighty effort to exterminate Christianity in the Rhône valley by drowning all the inhabitants. He therefore called up a fearful storm, and at his command the river began to boil and rise and overflow. Riding on the crest of a huge wave, Wotan himself swept down the valley, while the waters rose higher and higher, threatening to wash away everything along their path. But all Wotan’s magic proved powerless when he came in sight of St. Maurice, where the Christians had set up a huge cross. Before this holy emblem the waters suddenly cowed, crept back into their wonted place, and flowed peacefully on within their long-appointed limits.

Baffled and discouraged, Wotan again retreated to the Diablerets, where he is said to beguile the monotony of his sojourn by holding monster witch-dances on certain nights of the year. All the spirits, witches, and sorcerers of the neighbourhood then betake themselves on their broomstick-steeds to the Diablerets, to indulge in mad revelry. They circle around so wildly in their sabbatical dances that the motion raises a wind which sweeps down the mountain on all sides, while the sounds of their cries, hisses, and flying footsteps can often be heard far down the valley.

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The souls of all those who have done wrong while on earth are also supposed to haunt the topmost ridges of the Diablerets, where they play endless games of ninepins with the demons and their master. This belief is so general that in speaking of a dead sinner the natives generally say, “Oh, he has gone to join the demons on the Diablerets!” instead of stating that he has gone to Hades to receive due punishment for his crimes. Besides, one of the peaks of that mountain is called the Devil’s Ninepin; and when a great clatter is heard on the glacier, the people whisper in awestruck tones that the spirits are evidently engaged in their infernal game. When stones come clattering down on the pastures, the shepherds think they are some of the spirits’ missiles which have strayed out of bounds, and they seek to ward off the nearer approach of evil by repeated and fervent signs of the cross.

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On the way to Chamounix, far above the road, you can perceive the entrance of the famous stalactite Grotte de Balme, the supposed abode of all the fairies of that region. These creatures resembled human maidens, except that they were dark of skin and had no heels to their feet. Clad in long rippling hair, which fell all around them like a garment, the fairies of Balme often sought to lure young shepherds and hunters into their retreat. Sometimes, too, they met these men on lonely mountain paths, where they tried to win their affections by gifts of rare Alpine flowers, of fine rock crystals, of lumps of gold and silver, or by teaching them the use of the healing herbs and showing them how to discover hidden treasures. The youths who refused the fairies’ advances encountered such resentment that they were sure to meet shortly afterwards with some fatal accident. Those who ventured on the Diablerets, or the Oldenhorn, for instance, were suddenly pushed over the rocks into abysses and crevasses, from whence they never escaped alive.

But the young men who received the fairies’ overtures graciously were very well treated, and a few of them were even taken up to the grotto, where they feasted on choice game, and quaffed fiery wine as long as they obeyed their fairy wives. If, however, they proved untrustworthy, or tried to pry into the fairies’ secrets, they were ignominiously dismissed; and while some of them managed to return home, the majority never prospered again, and as a rule came to an untimely end.

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Before the Rhône enters the Lake of Geneva, and not very far from Noville, there are low banks and a few picturesque little islands, all covered with lush grass, and bordered with rustling reeds and shiny-leaved water-plants of all kinds.